Page 116

I haven’t moved from my goddamn couch all night. The whiskey bottle’s half-empty. And all I can fucking hear are those tears of hers.
Amelia’s not like anyone I’ve ever known. She doesn’t speak louder to be heard. She pulls away. She retreats when it gets too loud in her head. Slips into that quiet space where she can breathe again, where no one’s asking her to explain the storm. And yeah, she spirals. Overthinks. Needs space. But she also fights to stay open, even when it fucking hurts. I’ve seen her fall apart and still show up the next day like she isn’t carrying the weight of the world. She’s scared of needing anyone, but she’s letting herself needme. And I’m the asshole who fucked it all up.
I’ve spent the night thinking about everything she said to me yesterday. The truths she landed at my feet about Shayla. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to hear her yesterday. Not after that fight with Shayla. But fuck, I’ve had hours to turn it all over now, and I can’t help thinking I missed shit in my marriage.
Which is a mindfuck all on its own because it’s my job to see everything, to read people, to anticipate their next move. But I don’t think I saw Shayla. Not if she thinks she wasn’t enough for me. That she was just a crisis to be managed.
Fuck
Shayla and I burned too bright, too fast. We were young and had three years together before Luna came along. Shit was great until the pregnancy. Something changed between us I could never quite put my finger on. And then, after Luna was born, it only got worse.
I worked long hours. Shayla struggled with a baby. I tried like fuck to be there, and I was. But we fought over everything. Nothing I did was right. All I heard was I worked too much, I stopped wanting to take her on dates, I didn’t look at her like I used to. And fuck, I tried. I tried to fix it all. But I see it now—every time I tried to solve a problem, to take her pain away instead of sitting in it with her, I probably made her feel like she was a crisis I had to manage.
Looking back, yeah, I stopped hearing her. Fuck, I did. Because everything she said made me feel like a goddamn failure. And now, here we are, in a fucking shitshow of misunderstandings and a co-parenting relationship that’s hanging on by a fucking thread.
And Amelia saw it before I did. Not just the way I treat Shayla, but the way I default to control when I feel helpless. And in doing that with Shayla, I didn’t give her the space to speak. The space to be heard.
I shower and dress at six. Am in my office at home by seven. Trying to focus on work but only able to focus on Amelia.
Hayden provides me with a distraction when he calls at seven thirty.
“Everything okay?” he asks. “You and Amelia didn’t show for family dinner last night. Liv said you didn’t text.”
I lean back in my chair and reach for the back of my neck. “We had a fight. One of those ones where you don’t know if it’s over, but it sure as hell feels like something cracked.”
He’s quiet for a second. “You want to sit in it or pull it apart?”
“She watched me go toe-to-toe with Shayla and didn’t like what she saw.”
“Did you like what you saw?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve still got a shot.”
“Yeah, I fucking hope so.” I exhale a breath. “Were you just calling about dinner?”
“No. I wanted to run something by you that I’ve just discovered at work.”
“Shoot.”
“Shit started feeling off a few weeks back. A handful of my clients got hit out of nowhere with random scandals, online takedowns, internal leaks. And then right after the damage? They were approached by a crisis capital firm offering strategic investment. To help them recover, rebuild, get back on their feet. At first, I didn’t question it. Looked standard. The firm presented clean. But then it kept happening to more clients. And the timing was too convenient.
“I dug into the contracts. Same language across the board. Same holding company that was legit on paper. In reality, a front. So, I put my guy on it. Had him trace the shell layers. Took a bit, but he followed the trail. It led to Ryan Wakefield.”
Recognition flickers. I’ve heard that name before. “Remind me who he is.”
“Priscilla’s husband.”
Fuck. The woman Hayden crashed and burned over in his twenties. And from what I know, Hayden and Ryan had a falling out last year. “So, we’re talking crisis capital firm, dark money version.”
The kind that doesn’t justbuyinto crisis—they build it. Engineer the fall so they can own and rebuild.
“Exactly. I got hold of Ryan’s files. The ones that show who hired him to fuck people over. Client records, financials, emails. And guess who shows up on his client list around the time Amelia’s smear campaign kicked off? Her ex-husband.”
My jaw locks so hard it feels like something might snap.
Her fucking ex.